


Pocky Day 1: Pre-Timeskip Misread

by Nintendraw



Series: Pocky Days [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, The Pocky Game, pocky day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-13 16:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21497152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nintendraw/pseuds/Nintendraw
Summary: "There's a game with this stuff? And it involves KISSING?"(In which Caspar is minding his own business eating Pocky--not even knowing there's a game associated with it, let alone the rules--when Hilda comes up and springs both on him. Silly fluff.)
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez & Hilda Valentine Goneril, Caspar von Bergliez/Hilda Valentine Goneril
Series: Pocky Days [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1549489
Kudos: 14





	Pocky Day 1: Pre-Timeskip Misread

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Pocky Day/a meme that was going around on my Tumblr RP group on November 11. Copied from my and my friend's Hilda blogs. I wrote Caspar's parts. Definitely not as impactful as its war-phase sequel version; this one is more a silly moment in their life at the academy.
> 
> (And now that the Part 1 is also complete, I can put these two into a little series! Maybe there'll be more Pocky Day stories later? Who knows...)  
(Also, I was eating cookies and cream Pocky while posting this, and that stuff is amazing. I need to get more. :3c )

“Hey Caspar,” Hilda cooed as she practically skipped up to him. She’d seen him eating pocky on Pocky Day and the chance to see him flustered was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. “Do you wanna play a game with me? It’s simple,” she explained as she deftly pulled a piece out of his box. “I’ll hold this piece of pocky, and all you gotta do is eat all of it without chickening out. Easy, right?”

Her smile was oh so sweet and oh so innocent right before she took the cookie between her teeth. “Go ahead, Caspar!”

\---

“Mmm?” Caspar paused in the midst of happily chomping away at his third box of pocky to flick his eyes up at Hilda, who had skipped to a stop not far from him to stare at him expectantly. Before he could think of something to say, she delicately plucked a stick of pocky right from his box–_Hey, that’s mine!_ he pouted internally–and waved the free end of it in front of his face. He lifted an eyebrow as she spoke, but his interest was piqued. A game? He’d never heard of a game associated with these things; all he knew was that for whatever reason everybody was eating pocky today and there were boxes upon unclaimed boxes of the stuff in the monastery mess hall. (He’d already looted several of them. Nobody seemed to notice, or care.)

“There’s a game to all this?” he wondered aloud. (Good thing pocky was such a light snack that there was nothing left in his mouth as he spoke.) He listened carefully as she explained the rules. Well, rule. What kind of ludicrously simple game was this? “Sure, I’ll play!” he readily agreed. “That doesn’t sound hard at–”

And then she put the stick between her teeth.

“–all…”

For a moment, it was all Caspar could do to blink at her flabbergasted; all the while, she met his gaze playfully–teasingly, even. All of a sudden, this game just got a whole lot harder. Hilda held his gaze fast; even if he wanted to look away (and oh, _how_), he was pinned.

“Well? Go ahead, Caspar!” The pocky stick hanging out of her mouth bobbed <strike>tantalizingly</strike> teasingly with the words.

“Alright, _fine_!” he burst out. (Never mind that if he wasn’t already red in the face, he would soon be.) Let it be known that Caspar von Bergliez never backed down from a challenge!

Defiantly, not once dropping her gaze, he chomped down on the cookie and bit twice, advancing, daring her to go further. 

(… The stick isn’t nearly long enough for him to wolf it down whole as he might’ve done if not for the fact that chewing it tastes better. At least, that’s what he told himself.)

\---

Hilda knew Caspar would be flustered when he learned exactly _how_ he was supposed to eat the piece of pocky she was offering him, but she did not expect just how cute he would look with red flush to his cheeks. Adding to that his competitive eagerness, and it was now Hilda who was almost flustered. _Almost. _It was difficult at first, but she kept his gaze, her eyes locked with his as he bit closer to her end of the stick. 

He stopped after two bites—the tease!—allowing her to take the next move. Hilda took the bait, advancing with two bites of her own. There was only the smallest gap between her lips and Caspar’s left. She contemplated finishing the game herself, but curiosity got the better of her. Pink eyes looked up at him expectantly as she batted her eyelashes. Would he let his lips meet hers?

\---

This was it. The final stretch—literally. Caspar couldn’t recall the last time he’d gotten this close to anyone, _ever_. Maybe the last person to do that to him, especially outside of training, was his mother back in Bergliez territory, but _this_ just wasn’t the same at all. He could almost feel the heat and tension in the air, as if everyone at the academy had stopped by to gawk—or maybe it was simply his own dilated face vessels heating the space between them, his own nerves suddenly hyper-aware of how close she was to him right now, how her gentle breathing tickled his upper lip and how huge her beautiful rose-colored eyes were as they drilled into him, demanding nothing of him but a simple decision. And yet in his mind, the decision was not so simple. To advance or not to advance? Though the tips of their noses were not quite yet touching, he could still feel the tip of hers on his. Taking another bite would mean pressing more than just their noses together, and the thought, quite frankly, paralyzed him. Goddess, he hated to lose, but could he do it? He wasn’t even sure what he felt for Hilda yet, other than that she wasn’t just an _average_ classmate to him… The boy’s flush crept progressively down from his ears into his cheeks and his nose; one could practically see the steam coming out of his head as the wheels of his mind spun about in a useless circle.

_Gah_, he just couldn’t take it anymore! A moment’s tensed eyebrows were all the warning Hilda got before Caspar jerked his head abruptly to the side, breaking off his end of the pocky stick and pulling away. But the move was too reckless—uncoordinated, even—and his sudden reflex caused their noses to collide, the front of his lips to graze hers.

(How soft they were, like the hyacinths of Gronder Field; in that one unintended swipe he caught the barest taste of strawberry and gardenia; and damned if he didn’t actually find himself wanting a little more…)

There was no point in hiding the flush that now consumed his entire face; and Caspar made zero attempts to do so, still stunned by what he’d almost and not quite done. Even the remains of his pocky box, spilled onto the cobblestone beside him, went unnoticed as he gaped at Hilda, still kneeled in front of him with those same wide eyes, still boring into him with some unreadable meaning that his frazzled mind couldn’t comprehend.

Belatedly the rules of the game came back to him. “Guess I lose, right?” he managed dumbly after a too-long moment. “You’ve got more of the stick left…”

_(I lost and I kissed a girl and I KISSED A GIRL and I lost and what’s all this weird stuff I’m feeling inside—)_

If she said anything to him in that moment, Caspar didn’t hear it. His robin eyes were too busy darting all about the scene for something, _anything_ else to focus on. The pigtailed girl in front of him still held his entire being in thrall; but at last he noticed the biscuits on the cobblestone beside him, and how suddenly empty his pocky box was.

“Aw, heck, you’ve gone and made me waste all the pocky!” he blurted. “What if I wanted a little more of that?!”

… That line could be taken an entirely different way, and as soon as it hit him, his flush crossed the line straight into tomato territory. Oh, why weren’t there more convenient sandbars or open barrels here for him to bury his head under?

\---

It was only mere moments between Hilda taking her last bite and Caspar making his move, but time felt as though it slowed. Pink and blue eyes locked on each other, unwavering, and Hilda’s heart raced in her chest as she anticipated his move. 

Then his head turned and his lips brushed against hers and she was able move again. His cheeks flushed red and so did hers. She couldn’t understand why she was so flustered. It was only a game, after all, and it wasn’t like this was the first time she’d been kissed–far from it. Could this even be called a kiss?

She found herself disappointed. Perhaps she’d even _wanted_ him to win, as if this wasn’t just a way to tease and fluster him. She could have just leaned in again, closed the distance between them, and let their lips touch. She might have even started to lean in just a little.

Her attention was drawn to the spilled pocky and she welcomed the distraction from thoughts of how she had been able to feel the heat radiating off of his face just moments ago. A laugh pierced through the awkward silence as she scooped up the spilled treats. “Come on, let’s head to the dining hall and get you another box. And if they’ve run out already, we’ll find one for you in town. My treat.”

\---

Caspar was... somehow less relieved than he expected he'd be when Hilda returned their interactions to much safer things, but hey--an offer of food was still an offer, didn't matter who made it! The boy was only too eager to take his companion up on it, and as she picked up his spilled pocky, he sprang up to his feet, bouncing in place for a bit to shake the pins and needles out of his legs. "Alright!" he cheered. "Hopefully the dining hall has a few more flavors in store now. Don't get me wrong; chocolate is amazing, but I've eaten so much of it already, I'm starting to get a bit sick of it all!"

... wait...

"Th- That's not to say I'm getting sick of _you_, Hilda!" he stammered hastily, ears tinging yet again. "_You're_ great; nothing wrong with you at all. I just, uh, definitely went way too hard on the sweets this week, haha..."

He was really sticking his foot in it today, wasn't he. Hopefully Hilda didn't think too poorly of him after all this. The girl was already moving towards the dining halls, and Caspar scampered after her, trying and failing not to think too hard on what all had just transpired.

Little did they know that this was the start of so much more...


End file.
